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Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real (arstechnica.com) 67

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta thinks there's no reason to carry on with its defense after the Federal Trade Commission closed its monopoly case, and the company has moved to end the trial early by claiming that the FTC utterly failed to prove its case. "The FTC has no proof that Meta has monopoly power," Meta's motion for judgment (PDF) filed Thursday said, "and therefore the court should rule in favor of Meta." According to Meta, the FTC failed to show evidence that "the overall quality of Meta's apps has declined" or that the company shows too many ads to users. Meta says that's "fatal" to the FTC's case that the company wielded monopoly power to pursue more ad revenue while degrading user experience over time (an Internet trend known as "enshittification"). And on top of allegedly showing no evidence of "ad load, privacy, integrity, and features" degradation on Meta apps, Meta argued there's no precedent for an antitrust claim rooted in this alleged harm.

"Meta knows of no case finding monopoly power based solely on a claimed degradation in product quality, and the FTC has cited none," Meta argued. Meta has maintained throughout the trial that its users actually like seeing ads. In the company's recent motion, Meta argued that the FTC provided no insights into what "the right number of ads" should be, "let alone" provide proof that "Meta showed more ads" than it would in a competitive market where users could easily switch services if ad load became overwhelming. Further, Meta argued that the FTC did not show evidence that users sharing friends-and-family content were shown more ads. Meta noted that it "does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them," so it only shows more ads to users who click ads.

Meta also insisted that there's "nothing but speculation" showing that Instagram or WhatsApp would have been better off or grown into rivals had Meta not acquired them. The company claimed that without Meta's resources, Instagram may have died off. Meta noted that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that his app was "pretty broken and duct-taped" together, making it "vulnerable to spam" before Meta bought it. Rather than enshittification, what Meta did to Instagram could be considered "a consumer-welfare bonanza," Meta argued, while dismissing "smoking gun" emails from Mark Zuckerberg discussing buying Instagram to bury it as "legally irrelevant." Dismissing these as "a few dated emails," Meta argued that "efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg's state of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless."

"What matters is what Meta did," Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that allowed it "to 'thrive' -- adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success." In the case of WhatsApp, Meta argued that nobody thinks WhatsApp had any intention to pivot to social media when the founders testified that their goal was to never add social features, preferring to offer a simple, clean messaging app. And Meta disputed any claim that it feared Google might buy WhatsApp as the basis for creating a Facebook rival, arguing that "the sole Meta witness to (supposedly) learn of Google's acquisition efforts testified that he did not have that worry."
In sum: A ruling in Meta's favor could prevent a breakup of its apps, while a denial would push the trial toward a possible order to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    "There is no shit" *hand wave*

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      In fact, I believe he does.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yep, the delulu is strong with this one. And a lot of the super-rich these days. Essentially loosers with mountains of money. How pathetic. Money cannot buy you insight or a good personality.

        • Yep, the delulu is strong with this one. And a lot of the super-rich these days. Essentially loosers with mountains of money. How pathetic. Money cannot buy you insight or a good personality.

          Money can't even buy you respect or friendship. But it can buy you lots of pseudo-friends who pretend to care about and respect you.

          Those people are the enablers of the parasite class - traitors both to the rest of us and to the people they pretend to befriend. Parasites feeding on parasites - fitting, I suppose; but still disgusting.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Yep, the delulu is strong with this one. And a lot of the super-rich these days. Essentially loosers with mountains of money. How pathetic. Money cannot buy you insight or a good personality.

            Money can't even buy you respect or friendship.

            Indeed. In fact, once basic needs are comfortably covered, money is far more of a problem than an asset.

            But it can buy you lots of pseudo-friends who pretend to care about and respect you.

            Those people are the enablers of the parasite class - traitors both to the rest of us and to the people they pretend to befriend. Parasites feeding on parasites - fitting, I suppose; but still disgusting.

            I would go run screaming from these people. Regardless of how much money I have. There are few things more disgusting than yes-men.

    • When the hand that's waving holds a stack of bills, the people who it is waved at tend to listen more.

      Especially people in the first US administration that has not only openly embraced corruption, but glorifies it.

  • "Privacy Rapist Claims Privacy Raping Isn't a Thing", also:

    "Arsonist Claims to be Hero After Calling Fire Department", also:
    ....

    There FTFY.

  • The only surprise would be if Facebook did not request the case to be ended early.
    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Sadly, you are correct. The biggest surprise should be if the court falls for it, but that wouldn't surprise me at all.

    • Yup, that was my immediate thought as well. Pretty much every company involved in a lawsuit of any kind files at least a couple motions for summary judgment during the course of the suit. Most of the time, the lawyers don't believe that it will work, but you try anyway, just in case you catch the judge in an easily-convinced mood.
  • This is just gaslighting
    • Re:Gaslighting.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @05:58PM (#65381967)
      I wouldn't even call it that. With the Trump administration in charge of the FCC there is no chance of any antitrust law enforcement especially for people that are following money to Trump and his children which zuck very much is.

      But Facebook still has to go through the motions of pretending we have a functioning justice system so you get nonsense write ups like this from the lawyers. Extremely low effort because they know they won back in November.

      I get it that pointing that out triggers a bunch of people but this is the consequences of voting in November. I don't think there is anyone on this website who doesn't understand that the Republican party is not going to enforce antitrust law. I do think there's a whole bunch of people that don't like being reminded of that fact
  • After wasting entirely too much time while learning almost nothing I'm back to Slashdot...

    Might still be wasting my time but I should at least learn something more frequently than every 1.5 days.

    Oh well... serves me right for clicking on all those violent car accident videos..

    • After wasting entirely too much time while learning almost nothing I'm back to Slashdot...

      Might still be wasting my time but I should at least learn something more frequently than every 1.5 days.

      Oh well... serves me right for clicking on all those violent car accident videos..

      You learned something every 1.5 days? You're gonna be sorely disappointed coming back here.

    • > Just came back to Slashdot from Reddit...

      Slashdot is the only place I've never been banned from :]
  • He would claim blue is pink and up is down, if it favored his position. Why would anybody believe anything he says?
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Many people are really crap at fact-checking. Hence they look whether somebody is powerful and has money instead, in a failed attempt to compensate.

  • The company that has enshittified the internet argues that enshittification isn't real. How cute.

  • If they had chosen a less swear-heavy description it would be in wider use. And the discontent of users does not mean that Meta or other sites are what is wrong, only that there are people willing to lash out as whatever's unprotected. It should be said though that lack of quality and lack of proper design is a real problem.
  • ..of an alcoholic insisting he doesn't have a drinking problem?

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @05:53PM (#65381953)

    Enshittification is a designation made by observers which makes Meta intrinsically unqualified to say what is an is not. Business people call it different things, like a "return on investment ratio" but when a company decides to "optimize" profits they are trying to approach enshittity, the ideal point of maximum profit for the minimum investment.

    Enshittification happens to everything made by a publicly traded company because once they are established they will optimize for profit.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Enshittification happens to everything made by a publicly traded company because once they are established they will optimize for profit.

      INdeed. There is no escaping it. The perverted (and deranged) incentives shape the business and its capabilities. They shape it into the ground, long-term, that is. The only defense is to not be publicly traded.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Well modded as funny and insightful, but Slashdot should make both evaluations simultaneously visible. Even a way to search specifically for posts with both kinds of mod points...

      Then again, Slashdot may be the great pioneer website and poster child of Internet-driven enshitification. And no trace of a viable financial model that I can detect, so no way to fix anything of significance. Eager volunteers was a nice initialization approach, but it doesn't scale. Especially not over time.

      On the other hand, you'

    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      I presume it's asymptotic...

      Or should I say "assymptotic"?
      • Enshittity is in fact a limit, so yes it is asymptotic. The problem that companies face is trying to figure out how close they are to enshittity because they cannot smell enshittity over the stench of their own products.

    • Enshittification happens to everything made by a publicly traded company because once they are established they will optimize for profit.

      All organizations decay over time. *Normally* it takes three or more generations. Meta started like it was both 1st generation and 3rd generation. It's frustrating that other new organizations are also behaving like this.

      • All organizations decay over time. *Normally* it takes three or more generations.

        For privately held corporations it depends on the leadership so that's not a definite. However, I can tell you that once a corporation because publicly traded that it takes less than a decade to become a shitty company. The best example in recent memory is Google. People used to love Google because they didn't do shitty things. It wasn't long after their IPO that everything started changing for the worse.

        It's frustrating that other new organizations are also behaving like this.

        If their backing is from a venture capital firm or individual then the game is lost before it even began

  • ... are imbeciles inadvertently making things worse to justify their positions as per Google and most places these days.
  • Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real

    Well, there's certainly something meta going on, lol

    The degradation of discourse is real, at any rate.

  • The overall quality of Meta's apps has ALWAYS been shit.

  • by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @07:16PM (#65382107)

    "Users love ads" and "If Apple can let users choose to block ads, it will ruin our business."

    But I'm sure Meta's corporate attorneys will find jobs in the Trump Department of Justice when the company is broken up.

  • What else is new? Obviously the scammers, lamers and peddlers of crap will always claim to be no such thing...

  • is the vacuum decay of the universe

    From Wikipedia:

    The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. Nonetheless, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps over time the new vacuum would sustain if not life as we know it, at least some

  • In his 2024 book, The Anxious Generation [wikipedia.org], Haidt argues that the proliferation of smartphones and social media has led to a "rewiring" of childhood, contributing to a rise in mental health issues among young people. He advocates for delaying smartphone use until high school, banning phones in schools, and encouraging more unstructured play to combat these trends.
  • It's not real...it just infinitely isomorphic integer yet uncountable.

    JoshK.

  • Is it possible to enshittify something that is already shit?
    {o.o}

  • by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Saturday May 17, 2025 @09:09AM (#65383081)

    I'll believe Meta if they stop forcing in-app browser down our throats. External links should open in the user's browser of choice by default.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1h57x02/facebook_forces_you_to_use_the_inapp_browser/#:~:text=It's%20intentional%20as%20it's%20getting,use%20external%20browser%20for%20everything [reddit.com]

    The motivation is 100% greed and control.

  • Well they would, wouldn't they?
  • The server costs for most apps to not be shitty is so low as to show it is 100% greed.

    For a running app which records your runs online (like it or not) the server costs are negligible. Let's assume a compressed 50kb to store one run. A 160GB storage server is €16.40/m. Assume 100Gb for storage. That is 2 million runs. Assuming 200 runs per year, that is enough for 10 years of runs for 1000 users. so 0.02 per month per user. The IT costs are fixed, and are still nothing unless you have very few user
  • Genuinely curious. Having never used any Meta products, as they just never appealed to me, especially given the price (my data), I am curious, what product do they have that people just cannot live without, but cannot find any alternatives?

"The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it." -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340

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